


Tech Support

by sans_carte



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, Nerd Lexa, Prompt Fill, apologies to any baby boomers reading this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 19:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17966495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_carte/pseuds/sans_carte
Summary: “TriKru Tech Support, this is Lexa. How can I help you today?”“Yeah hi, this is Clarke and your software is total crap.”Written for Day 5 of Clexaweek 2019, Tinder AU & Nerd/Popular Trope





	Tech Support

“TriKru Tech Support, this is Lexa. How can I help you today?”

“Yeah hi, this is Clarke and your software is total crap.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Can you tell me a little more about the problem so I can help address it?” The canned response is so mild and unruffled, it’s clear this ‘Lexa’ has had plenty of practice using it on irritated customers on the phone.

Clarke feels slightly bad for her rudeness. But she’s on a deadline at her job—her new job, her first one out of graphic design school—and of _course_ that’s when the illustration program decides to crash on her.  She runs a hand through her hair, the pink-dyed tips almost touching her shoulders, as she glares at her computer screen.

“When I went to save this file, the computer froze and I can’t get it to restart.”

“Okay.” The voice on the other end of the line is annoyingly calm and light, almost musical.  “Did you try pressing Control-Alt-Delete?”

Clarke scoffs.  “Of course, I’m not a fucking Baby Boomer.”  Her officemate (who IS a Baby Boomer, and asks Clarke for help opening PDFs every other week) is out on vacation, and her door is closed so she could concentrate.  Otherwise she’d be less uncouth.

She could swear she hears Lexa stifle a laugh.  “Sorry, I’m required to ask. You’d be amazed what kinds of things people call us about.”

“I bet.” Clarke tries to cool her simmering rage a little.  “Look, I would just force a computer restart and go from there, but this file is kind of important and I’m really trying not to lose my changes.”

“Hopefully we can manage that.  Now,” Lexa’s voice sharpens, turns more commanding, “here’s what you need to do first…”

Lexa walks her through it over the phone, and inside of five minutes Clarke’s rescued file is open, saved, and working.  “You are my hero,” she gushes. “Like, I would bow down and swear fealty to you. Thank you!”

The tech specialist does laugh, this time.  “You’re welcome, Clarke. But no need for bowing or swearing.  You _could_ fill out a survey that’s in the service ticket I’m going to email you, though…”

“Sure, of course.” Clarke is already clicking on her palette, getting ready to settle in to her work.  “I’ll rave about your helpfulness. Thanks!”

She hangs up to the sound of Lexa’s amusement.

***

A few days later, half her fonts won’t open, leaving weird strings of random symbols across her text layers, like some sort of demon-summoning runes.  Clarke stifles a groan and picks up her phone.

“Good morning, TriKru Tech Support. How can I help you today?”

“Lexa! My hero.”  At the sound of Lexa’s voice, Clarke’s annoyance immediately decreases.  “Okay, here’s what’s going on…”

“...so you need to first install the Pine 1.5 fonts library _before_ you de-install the old Oak 4.0 library,” Lexa ends her short explanation diagnosing the problem.

“That makes no sense but okay,” Clarke says, clicking through as Lexa directs her.  Eventually she’s just stuck waiting for the file to download.

“Ugh, it’s taking forever,” Clarke complains, watching the glacial creep of the download status bar.

“It takes as long as it takes,” Lexa says patiently.

“Sorry, you probably have other customers waiting for help…”

“I’m helping you, Clarke...And between you and me, you’re a lot nicer than most of my other customers.”

Clarke smiles into the receiver before realizing Lexa can’t see her. “Well, thanks.”

Another five seconds pass, which feel like an hour to Clarke after her second coffee of the day. “Talk to me?” she says abruptly.

“Huh? About what?” Lexa seems a little caught off guard.

“Anything. Your breakfast, what you did this weekend. I’m _bored_ , Lexa.  And hungover. I need something to distract me.”

“Why are you hungover?”

“I went to my friend Octavia’s birthday party last night.  There were tequila shots involved. And I won at beer pong.”

“Let me guess, you were one of the popular kids in college,” Lexa says dryly.

“What makes you say that?”

“Apart from the beer pong skills, you seem very confident and social.  Probably good at getting people on board with your plans.”

“That’s not...okay, whatever.”

“You were, weren’t you.”

Clarke huffs.  “Not so much in college, but I _may_ have been prom queen and president of student government in high school.”

Lexa laughs, just as light and musical as ever.  It makes the graphic designer smile in spite of herself.  

“And I _maybe_ dated the quarterback of the football team.”

“Were you also a cheerleader?”

“No.  But I dated one of them as well,” Clarke says on a sudden impulse.  “I think she’s studying to be a psychologist, now…”

“Really?” Lexa’s voice is...purposefully casual.  Interesting. She’s either a polite homophobe, or queer herself.  “How is the download going?”

Clarke peers at her computer.  “It’s at 67 percent. I swear, our Internet here is so slow, it’s prehistoric.  So what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You were a nerd, right?”

“You’re just assuming that because I work in tech support now, I’m some huge geek with a comic book collection and a periodic table shower curtain.”

“Well, are you?”

“The comics part is true,” Lexa says after a pause.  “And I _may_ have been on the Science Olympiad team in high school.”

Clarke laughs this time.  She’s a little sad when the download eventually completes and the rest of the troubleshooting goes smoothly, because it means saying goodbye to Lexa.

***

Clarke starts calling tech support for less and less urgent issues, until she’s basically making things up.  The rare occasions she’s assigned to a different specialist, she asks to be transferred to Lexa or just calls back later. It’s partly because she’s bored—this job isn’t nearly difficult enough to challenge her, so she finishes her work quickly—and partly because she likes the intelligent, quiet, funny voice on her phone.  

She likes hearing Lexa wax passionate about her interests--sci-fi, mostly--while they wait for downloads and reboots, likes the way Lexa always asks her thoughtful questions in return.

“My computer isn’t working.”  

“Did you turn it off and turn it back on?”

“Yeah, but there’s just this blue screen now. What are you wearing?”  

“Is there any text on the screen? That’s highly inappropriate, Clarke.”

“Oh yeah, it says something about updating.  I’m not being inappropriate! I’m just curious.  Do you have to wear, like, a uniform if you’re just on the phone with customers? Can you just wear sweatpants all day, or do you actually have to wear work clothes?”

“Is there a percentage or progress bar? It should just take a few minutes to update.  I usually wear jeans, it’s pretty casual around here. Sweatpants would be pushing it though.  Indra would probably fire me.”

“Um, it says ‘getting ready’ and there’s a blinking circle.  So...what are you wearing under your jeans?”

There’s a sudden fit of coughing on the other end of the line.  “Coffee--down the wrong pipe--” Lexa chokes out at last.

Clarke chuckles.  “ _That_ was being inappropriate.”

“You realize this call is being monitored,” Lexa says, voice still rough.

“Really?”

“No.  That’s just something we say so customers are less likely to act like dicks.”

Clarke chuckles, then glances at her screen.  “Well, it’s working again. Guess the update finished.”

“Guess so.”  Even Lexa sounds a little disappointed.  “Have a good day, Clarke.”

“You too.  Talk to you later, nerd.”

When Clarke hangs up, a voice comes from the doorway of her office.  “Oooh, who’s that?” Raven teases in a sing-song. “You dating someone, Griffin?”

“What? No, I was talking to TriKru tech support.”

“Didn’t sound like it,” her friend and co-worker says.  “You were using your sultry voice.”

“I don’t have a sultry voice,” Clarke insists, to Raven’s raised eyebrow.  But then she grins. “Okay, well, this tech support girl...she sounds cute, you know? And she’s nerdy and funny, in a dry, sassy kind of way.”

“How can someone _sound_ cute?” Raven says dubiously, but Clarke ignores her.

“But it doesn’t matter anyway, she lives in Canada.  The company’s based in Vancouver, says so on all the emails. And I’m not even sure she’s into women.” Clarke sighs.

“Wait...she works for TriKru, you said?” Raven asks.

Clarke nods glumly.

“They were acquired by this bigger company based in Canada, but they’re actually local. I applied for a data viz job there before I landed this gig.”

“So you’re saying she could be _here_? In Polis?” Clarke almost squeaks.

“One way to find out,” Raven says. “Move.” She nudges the graphic designer out of her desk chair and starts typing.

Raven—who does 3-D data animations for their company and is scarily brilliant, in Clarke’s estimation—pulls up Lexa’s email signature from the many support service tickets Clarke has accumulated. Then does some sort of Googling wizardry (or possibly hacking, knowing Raven) until she finds…

“Well, she definitely lives in Polis,” Raven says, still typing away. “But your girl actually has some common sense and strong privacy settings, it’s hard to track down anything personal…”

“She’s not my girl,” Clarke retorts, peering over her friend’s shoulder.

“I heard you giggle, Griffin. Ah-ha!”

She clicks, and a small, grainy picture loads. It’s a girl around Clarke’s age with dark hair and pretty eyes behind a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, aiming a small smile at the camera.

“Daaaang. Okay TriKru,” Raven says approvingly.

Clarke swallows. Lexa Woods is awfully pretty, and she’s always had a weakness for glasses…

“Are there other pictures?”

“Nah, that’s all I can find.  But get this,” Raven opens another tab, “she used to write articles and sci-fi TV recaps for this feminist culture blog.  And she wrote a couple pieces about media representation of queer women and their relationships.” She wiggles her eyebrows.

Clarke can feel her cheeks warming.  She memorizes the name of the blog and Lexa’s handle on it (“Commander of the Forest”), fully intending to check it out later when she isn’t at work and Raven can’t make fun of her.

“So, you gonna ask her out?”

“How would I do that? Call her and say ‘hey, I know you’re just being nice to me because that’s your job, but I’ve developed a crush just based on your voice like a total creep and want to go out in person’?”

Raven tilts her head, considers it for a second.  “Yeah. Pretty much. Minus the creep part.” When Clarke makes a face, she insists.  “C’mon, it’s not like you’ve been having luck on Tinder lately, you were just complaining to me about it the other day.”

Clarke huffs and tugs Raven out of her chair.  “I have work to do.”

Her friend laughs.  “Okay, fine. Good luck with that.”

Clarke needs it, because she struggles to focus on her work the whole rest of the day.

***

A week later, Clarke’s email won’t refresh and she almost jumps with joy.  She dials the tech support number--which she had added to her contacts list--and enters Lexa’s extension--which she had memorized.  

“TriKru Tech Support. How can I help you today?”

“You’re not Lexa,” Clarke says in surprise and disappointment upon hearing a new voice.

“No, this is Ontari,” the woman responds, a little brusquely.  “What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”

“Can you transfer me to Lexa? It’s, uh, related to a previous issue she helped me with.”

“I’m sorry, Lexa no longer takes support line calls.  She’s been promoted.”

“Oh.  Um, thanks.  Bye.” Abruptly, Clarke hangs up.

It shouldn’t be such a disappointment.  Shouldn’t make her stomach sink like this.  She’d only had, what, half a dozen conversations with Lexa over the past few months, had never even met her in person.

Clarke tries to resign herself to never encountering the girl again, and curses herself for not having had the courage to ask her out earlier, as Raven had encouraged her to do.

Then one day at lunchtime she’s on Tinder, swiping without much enthusiasm, and...no, it can’t be her.  Can it? She compares the photo to the one on that feminist blog. Same glasses, same hair, Marvel-themed T-shirt...

And Lexa is...alarmingly hot, even with her nerdy shirt and glasses.   _Especially_ with the glasses.  Clarke swipes right.

It’s a match. Which means...Lexa swiped right on her already?

Clarke's stomach does a flip.  She wastes no time in typing out a message.  

_Hey nerd.  Congrats, I hear you got a promotion._

_Hey, Prom Queen. Thanks! I wasn’t sure if this was the same “Clarke”..._

_It is._  She thinks back to the last phone conversation they had had and then smirks.   _You never did get to tell me what you were wearing under your jeans.  Let me guess, boyshorts with the Starship Enterprise on them?_

_I thought you weren’t into Star Trek._

_I’m not...but I’m into you.  So maybe you can persuade me.  Seduce me to the Dark side of the Force or whatever_

_That’s Star Wars, not Star Trek.  You do realize mixing those up is a turn-off for me, Clarke._

_Guess I’ll have to make it up to you somehow. ;)_

There’s a pause, just long enough for Clarke to panic and think she actually offended Lexa or something, but then a new message appears.

_Guess you will. Saturday night? There’s an outdoor showing of The Force Awakens in Tower Park, starts around 7._

Clarke grins at her phone, pumping a fist in the air right in the middle of the office breakroom.  

_Sounds perfect. I can bring a blanket and snacks_

_I’m vegetarian, just FYI._

_Of course you are, nerd.  See you Saturday!_

_Can’t wait! Oh, and about your question…_

_?_

_You’ll have to wait and see for yourself  ;)_

Clarke blushes and then grins again.  The whole rest of that afternoon she breezes through her work, humming happily to herself.  Saturday couldn’t arrive quickly enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I have never actually used Tinder, so I had to Google how it works...hopefully this wasn't too far off. Comments and kudos always appreciated!


End file.
